160 THE GREAT NORTH-WEST 



Indians are wonderfully enduring, and will pursue an 

 animal for three or four days at a stretch rather than 

 lose it. 



Their dogs are not much good, though they serve 

 to attract the attention of bears, &c. They are a sort of 

 lanky cur, evidently the descendants of wolves. It is 

 singular that many years afterwards I saw precisely 

 similar dogs in the possession of a tribe of South 

 American Indians. 



I need not say much more of the Indians them- 

 selves than what I have already incidentally written in 

 the course of my narrative; but I may just mention 

 that I am not at all one with those who term him an 

 irreclaimable and irredeemable savage. I do not know 

 what is meant by a " savage " unless it is a brute, in 

 manner and conduct. If so, the Indian is not a brute, 

 and therefore not a savage. His chief offence in the eyes 

 of his conquerors is that he does not want civilisation. 

 In that I have some sympathy with him. A man bi'ed 

 in the v/ilds cannot look upon civilisation as an unmixed 

 blessing; in fact it is not an unmixed blessing to any 

 man. I have spent so much time myself in the wilder- 

 nesses of the earth that I am to a great extent unfitted 

 for a town life. I almost pine for the forests and prairies 

 that are so speedily disappearing. What then must be 

 the feelings of a race of men who for countless ages 

 have roamed the desert, at seeing their hunting grounds 

 seized by the money-grubber — by the land-grabber? 

 Put yourself in his place. What would you think of a 

 conqueror who turned you neck and crop out of your 

 home, remarking that he was immeasurably your superior 

 in all things from his mind to his togs ; ^ and demanded 

 that you should live as he does, worship the Great Spirit 

 as he does, and believe in him for all things, and in all 

 things, or be wi2oed out ? That is really what is happen- 

 ing. And because the Red Man declines compliance 



' Togs ! slang for clothes, but evidently derived from the classical toga. 



